Our good ship and crew was a bone to be chewed
when the thick fog of Whidbey comes early.
Shades of Gordon Lightfoot’s “Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald?”
Most definitely. That song kept playing in my head in the days after my brother-in-law Kent Oldenburger, longtime friend Bob Swenson and I had a white-knuckle experience the morning of August 18 while navigating Deception Pass between Whidbey and Fidalgo islands. (For background, see my last post).
We encountered blinding fog entering the pass, and five-foot swells just west of the bridge, much to our surprise. Bob and I were on the bow deck when we were pounded by those big waves. When water came over the bow, Bob and I knew we were in trouble. Kent screamed for us to get back into the cabin.
After the trip, I sat down and wrote some lyrics to a song. Yes, I took some liberties. Kent’s wife, Kimberly, technically isn’t a part-owner of the boat. But I needed a rhyme! (she is proud of Kent!) And for the record, Kent was really worried, to a point of obsessiveness, about the lasagne, even if we ate it the previous evening!
Anyway, I digress. I emailed the lyrics to Bob. A day later, he replied with a url to this song. Bob had sent the lyrics to a website that, with the help of AI, turns text into studio-quality music. The tune doesn’t sound anything like Gord’s 1976 smash hit. But I have to admit it’s a pretty catchy melody.
Click below to listen to the song ..
https://www.mureka.ai/song-detail/4LfUW1RthMT3mFAqH8DcKm?is_from_share=1
Here are the full lyrics:
The (near) Wreck of the Trawler Persistence
The legend lives on from the Swinomish on down,
of the passage they call Lushootseed;
Deception, it’s said, delivers fear and pure dread,
when the morning fog travels with light speed.
The boat, well cared for, weighing 1,000 pounds more
than the trawler Persistence weighed empty;
Our good ship and crew was a bone to be chewed
when the thick fog of Whidbey comes early.
The ship was the pride of Chuck, Kent and his bride,
Coming up from the locks in Seattle;
As trawlers will go, it’s a bit older we know,
with a good captain and a crew easily rattled.
Concluding some plans with a forecast in hand
when we left fully loaded for Roche Harbor;
But early that morn, when the ship was seaborne,
Could it be the fog feared on the doppler?
When lunch prep came, Kent came on deck sayin’
“Bob, will you please check on the lasagne”;
At 11 a.m., as the 5-foot swells came in, he said,
“Fellas, it’s too rough to feed ya.”
The captain exclaimed we had water comin’ in,
yelling “Bob, Rick, get back in the cabin;”
Fog so thick we could not see, our knees were wobbly,
Could it be the boat wreck we’d be fearin’?
Does anyone know, why we had to just go,
and test Deception Pass’ superpowers;
We look back and say we’d have made Bowman’s Bay,
in the p.m. well under an hour.
We might have cracked up, we might have capsized
We might have been thrown in the water;
But all we can say, we’re still alive today
We went home to our wives, sons and daughters.
